NewtekOne at Lytham Partners: Emphasizing Tech-Driven Growth

On Tuesday, 30 September 2025, NewtekOne (NASDAQ:NEWT) showcased its strategic vision at the Lytham Partners Fall 2025 Investor Conference. Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, highlighted the company’s technology-driven approach, contrasting it with traditional banking models. While NewtekOne remains optimistic about its growth potential, challenges in the economic climate were noted.

Key Takeaways

• NewtekOne operates without branches, using technology to deliver financial solutions.
• The company is one of the largest SBA 7(a) lenders in the U.S.
• NewtekOne’s efficiency ratio is between 45% and 48%, with a 2.5% return on assets.
• Technology and AI are pivotal in scaling operations and maintaining low costs.
• The company faces challenges in convincing investors of its distinct model compared to community banks.

Financial Results

• NewtekOne reported over $50 million in after-tax earnings.
• The efficiency ratio at the bank ranges from 45% to 48%.
• Return on Assets (ROA) stands at 2.5%, while Return on Tangible Common Equity (ROTCE) is approximately 20%.
• The merchant processing business generates about $17 million in pre-tax income annually.
• Comparatively, NewtekOne achieves higher returns on assets and tangible common equity than industry peers.

Operational Updates

• NewtekOne’s model eliminates branches and commercial bankers, leveraging technology for client interaction.
• The company employs approximately 600 people, with 350 customer-facing roles.
• AI is utilized for reading tax returns and other documents, streamlining operations.
• All processes are managed internally, except for real estate appraisals.

SBA 7(a) Loan Program

• NewtekOne is a leading SBA 7(a) lender, having been in the business for over 22 years.
• SBA loans offer long-term capital with government guarantees covering 75% of the loan.
• The company sells the guaranteed portion of the loan at a premium, holding the uninsured portion at prime plus three.

Alternative Loan Program

• Loans feature 10 to 25-year amortization schedules with no balloon payments.
• Interest rates are typically in the low double digits.
• NewtekOne has securitized these loans, planning a fourth deal with $250 million in collateral.

Future Outlook

• NewtekOne is in the early stages of growth, with scalability supported by technology and AI.
• The company aims to be recognized as a technology-enabled enterprise, not just a financial holding company.

Q&A Highlights

• Sloane emphasized the need for investors to recognize NewtekOne’s unique business model.
• The company has opened 19,000 depository accounts remotely, showcasing its technological capabilities.

For a comprehensive understanding, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Lytham Partners Fall 2025 Investor Conference:

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Hello everyone, and thank you all for joining us during the Lithium Partners Fall 2025 conference. My name is Roger Weiss, and I’m a Vice President at Lithium Partners. Today, I’ll be moderating a Q&A discussion with Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO of NewtekOne, which trades under the Nasdaq ticker NEWT. Barry, welcome, and let’s get started.

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: Thanks, Roger. Thank you.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Barry, NewtekOne has a 30-year operating history, I think. Can you talk about how and why you formed the company, and what’s changed over those years, and what hasn’t?

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: Sure, Roger. NewtekOne has a passion for helping independent business owners all over the United States. In 1998, the company was actually formed out of a spare bedroom in a New York City apartment, very much bootstrapped. Today, we have approximately 600 employees, $2.2 billion of assets, and make on an after-tax basis approximately over $50 million. The mission statement of the business way back when in 1998 is the same as it is today. How can we provide a full menu of business and financial solutions to what I refer to as independent business owners? There are some that call them SMEs, small and medium-sized enterprises, SMBs, small and medium-sized businesses. We refer to call them independent business owners. That’s really what we’ve been doing now for almost 27 years.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Got it. When I look at the company, it doesn’t look like most, you know, financial or bank holding companies. Could you talk about the rationale behind your operating model that has no branches, commercial bankers, brokers, or business development officers?

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: Roger, NewtekOne is a technology-oriented enterprise that provides business and financial solutions to that targeted customer base, which is approximately 36 million businesses in the United States and 43% of GDP. We are also a depository. Notice, I’m not saying we’re a bank or a bank holding company because we don’t look like a bank or a bank holding company. The purpose of basically acquiring a bank almost two and a half years ago is our customers go to the depository three to five times a week, 12 to 20 times a month. There’s a large frequency of interfacing with the depository. However, when you look at our business model, which I’m sure we’ll get into, it’s very different than the typical local community bank or regional bank that simply takes deposits with FDIC insurance and may make a loan to a business if they’re lucky.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Got it. Clearly, you’ve embraced technology a lot earlier than most in the industry. Can you talk about how you use technology? Also, does that include, you know, I guess, the technology of the moment, artificial intelligence?

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: Yeah, Roger, I appreciate it. The business of serving independent business owners in the most efficient manner really requires the use of technology. How do you interface with the client? How do you give them a frictionless environment to do all these things? When I say all these things, make payroll, take electronic payments, wire money, get a business loan, purchase insurance, tech solutions, tax savings analysis. When you look at our organization across the board, we give the business owner a direct interface to our organization, and they can get us on demand. They don’t have to go into a bank branch. They don’t have to have a meeting in a diner with a traditional banker.

We do all of these other things in addition to taking a deposit and making loans, which we’re good at and have done digitally and virtually through the Newtek Advantage and through our technology over history.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Got it. Now, I’ve heard you discuss how NewtekOne’s operating model solves three challenges that the banking industry faces. Could you talk about what those three challenges are and how do you solve them?

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: Sure. Challenge number one is the concept of efficiency. For those banking aficionados, there’s a term of art called the efficiency ratio, and ours is typically between 45% and 48% at the bank. What that means is that our revenues gauged against our expenses are the expenses are very low. Why are they low? There’s no brick and mortar. There’s no traditional bankers. It’s somebody on a screen like you see me here today. We have 350 customer-facing people. Number one, the bloat that you see at these large financial institutions, we don’t have. The second item is essentially the industry lives off of deposits below the risk-free rate. I define the risk-free rate as what a Treasury bill will yield or what a government money market fund. If you think about putting your money in a bank, it’s an FDIC-insured deposit. It’s like a government security.

Obviously, a bank account is more liquid and transactional than the latter, but it’s similar. Banks make money by deposits below the risk-free rate and investing in low margin, very low-risk assets. That’s how they make their money. By us providing all of these solutions through the Newtek Advantage, the ability to do payroll, unlimited document storage, getting somebody on a camera on demand, being able to acquire a loan remotely, being able to open up a bank account digitally, we opened up 19,000 bank accounts. We have solved the solution for somebody giving us deposits below the risk-free rate because we give them so many more tools to run their business or make them more successful. The third item is assets. As I said, most banks invest in low-margin, risk-free assets. Our loans are higher risk.

We have higher reserves, and net of our losses and reserves, our returns on assets and tangible common equity dwarf the industry. 2.5% RLAA, approximately 20% return on tangible common equity.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Wow. Let me kind of follow up on that since we’re talking about assets. From a business development story, how does NewtekOne source client opportunities? How do you go out there and get assets and other, you know, fee-based business?

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: I think this is another important part of the secret sauce. People in our space compete by the bag-carrying salesperson or the traditional banker. Over the course of more than two decades, we’ve developed relationships with alliance partners like Morgan Stanley, UBS, Raymond James, Navy Federal Credit Union, and Anderson Capital Advisors. They provide us referrals. We get over 600 business referrals a day. These are unique referrals from a business that might want workman’s comp insurance, a merchant account, a depository account, a loan. We do that business remotely with our staff on camera, and that’s how we get our business. We have nine Regional Vice Presidents that bring these relationships in. We sign a referral promotion agreement, and we get referrals every single day.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Got it. If I could just switch topics a little bit, NewtekOne has really been one of the largest originators of SBA 7(a) loans in the country. Would you mind talking about the 7(a) loan program and how NewtekOne fits into it? Also, kind of as an add-on to that, given your vantage point, you must have incredible insight into what’s going on and the health of small businesses out there. Could you talk about that as well?

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: Sure. We’ve been in the SBA business since 2003, so over 22 years. We’re one of the largest SBA 7(a) lenders in the United States. For those people that are not familiar with an SBA 7(a) loan, the borrower gets a great financing loan. Why is it great? It’s because a lot of business loans mature in three years or five years, where the principal’s got to get paid back in three years or five years. An SBA loan has a typical 10-year or 25-year amortization. The loan amortization and the loan repayment period on the principal reduces the monthly payment. It’s really long-term patient capital, which is what small businesses need. As a lender in the space, the government guarantees 75% of the loan. We are responsible for the risk on 25% of the loan. The risk is shared pro rata. It’s not subordinated.

When we make a loan, we’re basically manufacturing a 75% government-guaranteed bond, which we sell into the market, typically at a 10% to 11% premium. We hold a 25% uninsured but non-subordinated piece on our books, which is typically prime plus three. We get a great rate for the portfolio. We get a gain on sale when we sell it off. It’s a great feeder for all of our other solutions as well, because people come to us for funding, and we’re able to do many other things for the business to make them more successful. Being able to provide long-term patient capital to this great, very major force in the U.S. economy is valuable.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: The program itself is a great moneymaker for you, and it also is a great introduction to cross-selling all the other things that you can provide these folks.

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: Very clearly. The other part to your question was, you know, what’s your sort of insight into the economy relative to small business? We have a very unusual economy right now. The new administration is making a lot of changes. That creates volatility. With that, you kind of have the haves and the have-nots. Just to be, you know, frank and transparent, if you’re in artificial intelligence or you’re in technology, you’re in a good spot and you’re a winner. The really lowest part of the economy is struggling right now. Why is that? From the prior administration, you’ve got higher insurance costs, you’ve got higher interest rates, you’ve got higher labor costs. The businesses today, many of them are struggling, and it’s not easy. We’ve been doing this since 2003. We’ve been through the great financial crisis, we’ve been through the pandemic.

We’ve seen these volatile segments and been able to manage them. We were involved with rates higher than they are today, and also in a 3% prime environment. We think that many of these businesses that don’t adapt to the new paradigm, using artificial intelligence, using technology, being more efficient to deal with the inflationary aspects in business really makes it a challenge for a lot of our customers. Fortunately, we have the ability for diversification of industry, of geography, and it’s really worked out well for our organization.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Got it. Let me just go back to the SBA 7(a) loan program for a second. If I remember correctly, before you bought the bank, when you were a BDC, you used to take that 25%, I’ll call it an at-risk piece, and securitize it and sell it off. Since you bought the bank, you’re now keeping that on balance sheet. How do you view that? What was the change that buying the bank provided you with?

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: The bank gave us diversified funding sources, which, you know, in the world that we’re in, having many different areas to get capital, whether it’s through securitization, unsecured debt, secured debt, or deposits, is valuable. Secondly, by utilizing the bank’s cost of funds for the uninsured participations, it’s a much lower cost of funding than if we were to go to get a bank line of credit and then do securitizations off of it. We’re just beginning to see the benefit of our lower cost deposits because we are now growing the business deposits. The consumer high-yield savings are a little higher, but they’re still much cheaper than if we were institutionally borrowing and doing securitizations. I think that clearly, owning the bank has reduced funding costs. It’s enabled us to increase leverage because as a non-bank BDC, which we were, we had limitations on leverage.

The most important aspect to buying the bank, number one, is that we enable our clients to send money and receive money using the bank’s infrastructure much more cost-effectively with real-time payments on demand and on an integrated basis into the Newtek Advantage, which in addition to free ACH, free wire, they now could see all their merchant service batches, their refunds, their chargebacks. All the data is rolled into the Newtek Advantage. I would suggest that investors and clients go to our website, newtekone.com, look at the Newtek Advantage, and see how it’s a tremendous business portal for a business owner to run their business and how it makes them more successful.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Got it. One of the other questions I had was, in looking at your presentation materials and press releases, you highlight the alternative loan program. Can you talk about what it is and how are you sourcing those loans?

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: Today, the term private credit is an overused term, and everyone is talking about private credit. They talk about, "Gee, the non-banks are competing with the banks for private credit." We created a program called the Alternative Loan Program, which we scribbled off of our two decades of SBA knowledge. The Alternative Loan Program has the same 10 to 25-year amortization schedule with no balloon payments. What we also learned from the SBA program is personal guarantees are very valuable, particularly if the borrower is really strong. The question is, you have a strong borrower, a lot of them will say, "Gee, I don’t want a personal guarantee to loan.

That’s silly, or pay the rate that you’re charging me." When you sit with an intelligent borrower and show them that their monthly payment is lower, and we give them additional flexibility with limited to no covenants because of the PG and the fact that we lien personal and business assets, the confident business owner says, "You know what? I’m going to pay your rate, which is typically low double digit. We’re going to pay your fees because your loan lowers my monthly payment and gives me more flexibility." We’re protected because we have the PG and we have the liens on the personal and the business assets. We’ve taken those loans and we’ve put them into three securitizations. We’re about to do our fourth coming up in the next quarter. That’ll be a fairly sizable deal with probably $250 million of collateral in it.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: In terms of sourcing the loans, how do you go out and find people who obviously want to do these kinds of loans with you?

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: Roger, that’s an insightful question, which I usually don’t get asked. Businesses don’t know what kind of a loan they want. They don’t know if they want a revolver. They don’t know 7(a). They don’t know 504. They don’t know whether it should be an alternative loan program. We use the one big funnel to get all the inquiry in. Our business service specialist helps them fill the document funnel. It’s a safe and secure funnel. There are no emails with PDFs or papers in an unsecured basis flying around. The borrower, on a password-protected basis, can invite their law firm, their tax preparer, and control it to drop and drag and click and put documents in the file and assemble it. The file gets complete typically within 24 to 48 hours.

We’re able to pre-qualify the borrower for one of our programs. We acquire alternative loan program loans the same way that we would make a revolver. It’s just one big funnel, same staff. It goes to underwriters. The underwriters are unique to the segment. It goes to committees. That’s how we do our business. Very levered. There are not four separate lending businesses for the four different types of loans.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Got it. That’s amazing. You know that pretty much it’s all handled internally and parsed is just phenomenal.

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: Internal lawyers, internal closers, loan assemblers, underwriters, everything is internal. There’s nothing that’s farmed out except for real estate appraisals.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Clearly, this is a very profitable operating business model, and it appears to be scalable. Can you talk about the sustainability of the profitability? You know, how much additional infrastructure do you guys need, you know, to grow?

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: I get asked this a lot, and people say, you know, what inning are you in? I say we’re in the first or second inning. A lot of that is based upon the three problems I’ve indicated that we’ve solved for this industry that’s a little bit archaic and has historically not embraced technology. You could see by the utilization of technology, it’s immeasurably scalable. Using artificial intelligence in addition, a lot of the functions that are done from our competitors that are done manually, this is really just a document. This is just a data exchange. You exchange the data. Now you then use artificial intelligence to put the data in the right format to make a decision that now you could put a person involved to look at the entire process to make sure all the boxes are checked.

We’re using artificial intelligence to read tax returns, operating agreements, leases. We use artificial intelligence so that our current staff that’s speaking to clients is saying these five things, these 10 phrases. If they’re not, a report on a real-time basis goes back to a supervisor. We’re embracing artificial intelligence today. It’s incredibly valuable. When you look at the industry, there’s a huge expense burden that’s borne by labor that, frankly, isn’t necessarily as efficient as it can be.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Got it. When you talk about technology, is this something that you went out and bought from a third party? Is it something you’ve developed? If you’ve developed it, how have you thought about it and where do you see it going ultimately?

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: When people ask about the organization, I try not to say the technical definition that we’re a financial holding company owning an OCC chartered bank, which is what’s underneath it. We are a technology-enabled company that embraces technology to provide business owners the best-of-breed solutions with the least amount of friction. I think that from our standpoint, getting people to look at us differently, understanding that it’s immeasurably scalable, that there really aren’t a lot of competitors in the space that do what we do for the customer. Regarding the profitability, if you start off with products that have got better margins and you do it at a lower expense ratio and you’ve got two decades of experience, you’re probably in a good position. What’s difficult for us right now is the marketplace keeps looking at us and comparing us against community banks. We don’t compare well against community banks.

First of all, they don’t grow. The numbers barely move. It’s like a coupon clipping exercise. We make loans and we sell them. We get gains on sale. People don’t like the fact that a gain on sale isn’t reoccurring. It’s been reoccurring for us for over two decades. We have a great merchant processing business that makes about $17 million of pre-tax income a year. People are coming to do business with us because it’s a zero-fee bank account. The interest rates are higher. Every one of our solutions, we believe, is really world-class, state-of-the-art, and very competitive. You bundle it all together and give the business owner the convenience of having, through the Newtek Advantage, data, transactional capability, analytics. It’s pretty hard to beat.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: No, it sounds like a wonderful and very smart combination.

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: Thank you.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: I think we’re getting toward the end. Before we wrap up, let me ask you, is there anything I should have asked or any last comments that you’d like to throw in there?

Barry Sloane, President, Chairman, and CEO, NewtekOne: Yeah, I think that if the investor base would look at what we’re doing and the way that we do it, instead of the numbers, not that the numbers are bad, numbers are good, they’re just different. If they would look at the fact that we’ve opened up 19,000 depository accounts from the business owner’s home or place of business, we do 2,700 individual unique business loans a year using our technology. We give the customer a better way to send money and receive money by handling their payroll, merchant services, free ACH, free wire. We give them the Newtek Advantage where they can get a free tax savings analysis, free insurance analysis, both personal and commercial, and a free IT analysis as well to look at their hardware, software, and what they’re doing.

They’re going to come away and say, "This is a very unique business, and I want to own a piece of this business," instead of just trying to compare us to the half a billion or billion-dollar community bank that doesn’t necessarily make any sense.

Roger Weiss, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Got it. Barry, I think that is the end of our conversation. Firstly, I want to just say thank you. Certainly, thank you to everybody who has been watching us. If any of the folks out there have any questions or would like to schedule a meeting with you at our conference, please shoot me an email at weiss@lithiumpartners.com. If you’d like to learn more about Lithium Partners, you can visit our website at lithiumpartners.com or follow us on LinkedIn to stay connected about future events. We hope you all enjoy the rest of the conference and have a great day.

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